Govt. planning 'one nation, one market' in agriculture domain

Govt. planning 'one nation, one market' in agriculture domain

The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government is working on creating a common agricultural market that will improve the lot of farmers and the efficiencies of India's notoriously inefficient farm-produce markets.

The government put out a model law proposing a fundamental reset in the way agricultural markets operate on 24 April. It proposes to replace existing fragmented and over-regulated markets for agricultural produce and allow farmers a wider choice of markets beyond the local mandi or wholesale markets.

"Our goal is to create a one-nation, one-market model for farmers, similar to what GST (the goods and services tax) is to taxation, a model of creative disruption for an efficient marketing system," said Ashok Dalwai, additional secretary at the agriculture ministry and head of the committee that drafted the new model law on marketing of agricultural produce.

The process was set in motion after Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched an electronic National Agriculture Market (eNAM) platform in April 2016 and later set an ambitious target of doubling farm incomes by 2022.

Most importantly, it withdraws the power to issue trading licences from the mandis managed by a board of traders and vests it with the state's director of agriculture marketing.

 "The centre can bring in enabling legislation to allow inter-state trade. I hope it will deploy the political capital to overhaul agriculture marketing the way it did for GST."